Capturing Contemporary Japan: Differentiation and UncertaintyWhat are people's life experiences in present day Japan? This timely volume addresses fundamental questions vital to understanding Japan in the first decade of the twenty first century. Its chapters collectively reveal a questioning of middle class ideals once considered the essence of Japaneseness. In the postwar model household a man was expected to obtain a job at a major firm that offered life long employment; his counterpart, the "professional"